Partners and Affiliates

Just as life sciences companies have a long history of collaborating in ways that foster innovation, the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey (HINJ) — since its founding in 1997 — has partnered with the industry’s many stakeholders in ways that help promote patient access to medicines, therapies and cutting-edge medical technologies as well as protect the sector as a leader of New Jersey’s workforce and economy.

National and State Industry Collaboration

HINJ’s efforts to protect patient access and promote innovation have included collaboration with the life sciences industry’s national trade associations:

HINJ also has cultivated strong working relationships with other state-based life sciences organizations across the country that focus on protecting patient access. This informal network facilitates the exchange of best practices and encourages collaboration that can amplify the benefits of a robust innovation environment.

New Jersey Initiatives

Here in New Jersey, HINJ has successfully pioneered innovative programs and partnerships to expand the life sciences’ footprint and work with patients, policymakers, business leaders and other stakeholders and audiences on issues related to healthcare.

These programs and partnerships include:

RX4NJ

Rx4NJ is a central portal for 400 prescription assistance programs that provide free or low-cost prescription medications to qualified patients. To date, Rx4NJ has served over 300,000 New Jersey patients since its inception in 2005.

Rx4NJ serves as a critical vehicle in the biopharmaceutical community’s efforts to ensure that patients in need have access to their medicines, as well as providing a platform to partner and build strong relationships with policymakers by jointly promoting patient access.

Rx4NJ served as the the pilot for PhRMA’s national Partnership for Prescription Assistance program, which was recently relaunched as the Medicine Assistance Tool.

INNOVATION NEW JERSEY (INJ)

Founded in 2010 as a joint initiative of HINJ and the New Jersey Business and Industry Association (NJBIA), Innovation New Jersey (INJ) (innovationnj.net) is a coalition of more than 100 businesses, industry groups, higher-education institutions and state government agencies dedicated to promoting policies and initiatives that foster a robust innovation-driven economy in New Jersey.

INJ also works closely with the state government and serves as the portal to the state’s innovation community, further reinforcing HINJ’s stature as the leader of New Jersey’s innovation economy.

In March 2013, INJ and the New Jersey Policy Research Organization (NJPRO) Foundation published Building Bridges II: Breaking Down Barriers — Perspectives from Academia and Industry on Building a New Jersey Innovation Ecosystem. The 24-page report is intended to serve as a catalyst to encourage academia, industry and the state to work together to meld their respective research and development (R&D) assets in ways that build out the state’s “innovation ecosystem” and affirm the state’s historic role as a global leader in innovation.

WE WORK FOR HEALTH OF NEW JERSEY (WWFH-NJ)

We Work For Health of New Jersey (WWFH-NJ) — the state chapter of We Work For Health — is a grassroots network that began as a partnership between HINJ and PhRMA. WWFH-NJ works to unite health consumers, biopharmaceutical company employees and retirees, vendors, suppliers and other business, academic and community partners to demonstrate how these diverse groups work together to improve America’s health care system and strengthen our economy.

The economic footprint of the New Jersey biopharmaceutical community can be measured not only by the traditional indicators of employment and output, but also in part by its impact on the vendors, large and small, that provide services or supplies to biopharmaceutical research companies in the state. Toward that end, WWFH-NJ regularly reports on biopharmaceutical companies’ vendor spending in New Jersey.

In its most recent summary of data from New Jersey biopharmaceutical companies regarding their business relationships with vendors and the total expenditures paid to vendors in New Jersey, WWFH-NJ reported that those companies alone spent $7.9 billion on vendor spending and maintained 5,566 vendor relationships in 2018.